All posts tagged ethnic partition

Two researchers say they’ve strengthened the case that, in Africa, such factors as geography and local culture matter as much as or more than national institutions (whose foundations, in some cases, were put in place by colonial powers).

The economists, Stelios Michalopoulos, of Brown, and Elias Papaioannou, of Dartmouth, compared levels of development — as measured by the amount of light detected at at night by satellites — across regions and countries. They were especially interested in the hundreds of cases in which artificially created national lines, usually dating to the late 19th century, partitioned regions occupied by a single ethnic group.

For the distribution of ethnic and tribal groups, they relied on a digitized version of a map created by the anthropologist George Peter Murdock, in 1959.

Near capitals and other large cities, the effects of national institutions seemed to make a difference in development. But in more remote lands, especially near borders, the national distinctions tended to disappear: Ethnic groups tended to perform equally well (or badly) on either side of a national border. Michalopoulos and Papaioannou write,

Biographies

Gary Rosen is the editor of Review and the former managing editor of Commentary magazine. His articles and reviews have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. He is the author of "American Compact: James Madison and the Problem of Founding" and the editor of "The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq."